The deep web (a.k.a. the darknet or dark web) has become famous for its black markets, where intrepid shoppers can use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency to purchase everything from drugs to guns to stolen credit card details over the internet. If have ever wondered how to access these dark web markets and how to buy things from them then this article is for you.

One thing that may surprise you when you first access the internet’s famous black markets is that these are not the kind of ‘anything goes’ free for all that you may have seen portrayed in popular culture. Yes, you can use them to buy illegal items, but all of the main marketplaces have rules about what vendors are allowed to sell. In fact, you will find that the most popular marketplaces often seem to be the ones with the strictest rules. You will not see vendors selling poisons, explosives, videos depicting violence, or anything to do with weapons of mass destruction. Some marketplaces also ban guns (even for customers in places like the USA where you can legally buy firearms) and other ‘lethal weapons’, as well as stolen data such as hacked accounts or stolen credit card details. By far the most common thing you will find is drugs, including recreational drugs like cannabis and ecstasy and prescription medicines. You will also find things like counterfeit clothing, accessories and jewellery, and lot of legal items such as e-books and guide, as well as self-defense products such as pepper spray, and software for helping people protect their privacy and stop internet spying.

Another thing that you should be aware of is that many of these marketplaces have downtime. If you click a link to visit a dark web market and it is offline don’t panic – it is probably temporary. Yes, these markets do come and go as they may be shut down by authorities or the administrators may disappear, but they also suffer from a lot of temporary outages due to attacks from other market operators, maintenance, or the side-effects of security measures.

Further down the page you will find a reference list of marketplaces. A well established reputation has a high value, so these vendors are unlikely to sacrifice that by trying to scam you. But reputation alone is not always enough, as a good reputation can be manipulated or entirely faked, specially with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. There are many cases where scammers pretended to be a successful person like the entrepreneur and Dragon Den’s star Peter Jones, and falsely claimed he endorsed a scam crypto trading robot called Bitcoin Revolution. This review highlights the link with Dragon’s Den. I wouldn’t recommend buying from a new vendor who hasn’t yet established a reputation.

Tor Dark Markets

The first thing that you will need is a way to access the deep web, whilst protecting your own privacy whilst browsing these sites. You can use either TOR or I2P – these are both anonymous networks which allow users to browse in private whilst also allowing webmasters to set up ‘hidden services’. All of the markets listed here in this article can be found within the TOR network, as this is the most popular at the moment. It is also the easiest to use for newbies.

Accessing TOR is no more difficult that installing a new browser, but if you would like more information then please read our article How To Access the Dark Web

Using a VPN like IPVanish alongside Tor is not essential, especially if you are just buying the odd little thing, but it is recommended if you want the best possible privacy protection and is good practice for your regular internet browsing in any case.

CryptoCurrency & Private Payments

Once you have your computer set up to access TOR onions (the name given to TOR’s hidden services, which use the .onion domain suffix), the next thing that you will need is some digital money to spend. Obviously shopping for illegal items, as some people do on these sites, using credit cards or Paypal is not a good idea because all of your payments could be tracked and linked back to you, so all of these markets use Bitcoin or other alt coins for making payments.

Bitcoin allows you to create a wallet without revealing your identity, but it is not entirely anonymous. All payments which have ever been made are stored on a public blockchain that anybody can view. If you want to be really safe, therefore, it is best to use a mixing service when transferring coins to your marketplace shopping wallet. This makes it more difficult for any investigator to tell where the coins came from.

The easiest way to go about this is to buy some coins from a peer-to-peer exchange like LocalBitcoins, or a wallet service with built in exchange like Coinbase. Remember that the price may change a little between when you buy the coins and when you use them to make a purchase, so if you are looking to buy a specific product it is best to exchange slightly more than you need just to be on the safe side – you can always sell what you don’t use later. You will probably need to provide ID to buy the coins, so if you are concerned about your purchases being tracked back to your real world identity you must transfer them to the marketplace via a ‘coin mixer’. These services are very simple to use – instead of sending your coins directly to the deposit address for your marketplace account, you just give the deposit address to the mixing service and they provide you with an new address to make the payment to – they then do their magic before passing on new ‘clean’ coins that can’t be traced back to you. They will usually charge you a couple of percent on each transaction for providing this service.

The marketplaces themselves will also use disposable addresses and may even have their own basic mixing service, for added security.

For the vast majority of users simply making use of a mixer when depositing or withdrawing any unspent coins will be enough, but for serious users or just those with an interest in the subject, you can learn more in our article How To Buy, Sell and Use Bitcoin Anonymously.

Some marketplaces also accept alt coins like Dashcoin, which have their own anonymity features built into the protocol.

How To Protect Yourself From Scams – Escrow and Multi-Sig

When you buy something from a stranger over the internet you obviously need to be careful. More than anything, there needs to be a system in place to stop the vendor from taking your money and just disappearing, without bothering to send you the product. All marketplaces use reputation systems, which go a long way to achieving this – a well established reputation has a high value, so these vendors are unlikely to sacrifice that by trying to scam you. But reputation along is not always enough, as a good reputation can be manipulated or entirely faked, and in any case you may wish to buy from a new vendor who hasn’t yet established a reputation.

In order to protect you some kind of escrow will be used. This involves a trusted third party (almost always the site admin) arbitrating between the buyer and seller when there is a disagreement. Most markets use a central escrow service, in which this third party takes control of the coins you are paying with until you hit the finalize button to indicate that the product has been delivered. If the product never arrives you must contact the escrow provider to ask for a refund. This usually prevents vendors from scamming people, but it introduces a risk of an exit scam by the escrow agent themselves – something which doesn’t exactly happen often (especially if you use one of the recommended sites below) but is certainly not unheard of.

Some sites allow vendors with a very good reputation to require their buyers to ‘finalize early’ (FE), which means that you do not get this escrow protection.

A safer alternative is multi-sig escrow, which is a bit more technical to set up and isn’t offered by all marketplaces, but protects you against any risk of the escrow provider stealing your coins. To learn more check out this article which will teach you how to use multi-sig escrow on dark market sites.

Recommended Dark Markets Review List

Please keep in mind that these sites do sometimes have temporary down time – if any of these links aren’t working then just try again later or pick a different site.

Dream Market

Dream market is well established site with a solid range of products across most popular categories you will find on the deep web. It seems to load quickly unlike others which can be slow and cumbersome, and it is very easy to use. It is also well established and reliable, but has few additional features and uses only the admin provided escrow service. When you sign up the site generates a PIN number for you in addition to the password which you provide.

Empire

This is among the best of the newer markets for 2019 and has really established a great reputation as well as having a very wide range of products from drugs to fraud relating, hacking, counterfeits, and a whole lot else. The design is similar to dream market and its pretty easy to use with extra guides and information to help you along. You can use the invite link below to register for an account:

PGP and Secure Communications

PGP stands for ‘pretty good privacy’. It is often used to encrypt messages so that only the intended recipient can read them. The marketplace websites themselves should uses encryption within their messaging system, so most users will not even need to think about this stuff – just make sure you use the messaging system provided and don’t start communicating with vendors via email.

But there is always a possibility, however unlikely that this internal system could be compromised. So for power users who want added protection, you may want to consider learning how to use PGP so that you can encrypt your communications yourself.

The most important thing to encrypt is your shipping address, as this can obviously be used to link purchases to you personally. Beware of marketplaces which ask you to store your shipping address on the site or communicate it with sellers without using encryption, as this could expose you to the risk of being tracked.

Thank you Lester, I had noticed there wasn’t really any articles which tried to give a beginner everything they need to know to get started in one place so I was hoping I would be able to fill that gap with this article – its nice to get some positive feedback!

but what is the difference between markets and vendor shops . Do you have to go on like Alpha BAy or Valhalla or anything like that. Would really like to avoid that. Do any take any other form of payment instead of bit coins as i see no way of not getting ripped off buying or using those and what to do with them even if i was able to buy them.

This page and article was exactly what i have been looking for, needing, and wanting to come across. It explained everything from A-Z for buying in the markets when your a total newbie like myself. Im so happi now. Thanks guys. Great job!!! Keep up the good info!!! Take it eZ, BreeZy & #BeeLayZmoN peAcE”

I am a newbie, and I am in deepshit. Thanks to the lies and so forth of our regular system. I am now contemplating suicide, I am going through withdrawals, and taking a handful of doctors with me. I will try to use your information to get to the darkweb, and hopefully get some relief from these WDs. Thank you for your informative post.

Prior fed agent here, and had to weigh in. Deepweb is like anything, it can be used as a tool for good – or evil. Kudos on the great tutorial, I can’s stress enough – Noobs… practice safe internet practices. may want to add a link or two on techniques.

Also, although I have had to enforce it – never agreed with weed being illegal – legalize it and tax it I say.

Djack – seen peeps in your situation – gawd I feel for ya bud… you are the main reason I decided to leave a reply… be strong.

i was curious and wanted to see what the dark web and dark markets really are. Maybe cuz i couldn´t belive that something like this could exist. When i downloaded Tor browser and find one of the black markets i got sick. Things that are sold there are so unhuman, so bad and so awfull that i couldn´t stay there for long time. Humans are sold for bitcoins, child porn also, drugs, weapons and so on. it´s horible that you can easily find there everything! Everyone who have just a little bit humanity inside don´t use it. If i can give you people just one advise, forget about dark web and dark markets! You are humans not animals.

I’m not sure which of the ‘black markets’ you went to. but none of the major ones, and none of the ones I’ve ever seen, have child port or slaves or any of those things. Drugs and weapons yes, but not the other things you mention.

I need to purchase anoughof a medication to last6 till the 21st of this month,not for
“getting high”but because have chronic fatigue from lyme diease and have been on it for 8 years,prescribed legally.My doctor however did not write enough to last till appointment and she did not tell me she would be on a vacation.I don’t really want to do this but if I don’t I will lily lose my job and I need it.How can I inquire BOUT THIS>iM ON A MAC and the for thing says it is unavailable for mac right now.Really not sure how to do this at all.Cab someone please helo me I would really appreciate it

I can’t really answer that question. I would guess that it is possible but I’ve never looked, so you should just visit each of the marketplaces and search for it. For safety you should look at the reputation of the person you are buying from. If they have a long history with lots of sales and all positive reviews then that is a good sign, but there may be people out there trying to sell counterfeit versions which would be less safe.

I try to check them all when I can and as far as I know they are all ok, but nothing is certain in this world – if there is any particular one that you are having trouble accessing or any other kind of problem then I would be grateful if you could share your experience, thank you.

Hi, Dean. Really appreciate your work, the articles are great, definitely a step by step guide with all the things described from the beginning. I have a technical question, more an advice. I need to find a btc wallet with a fixed address, so the person on the other side would know, that btc he has received came from the definite wallet. It is one of the rules, before payment I have to give him the address.

I’ve tried different wallets: blockchain, coinbase, but they don’t even let you to know, from what exact address you are sending your btc.

Could you advise me another wallet with an exact address I can use once? Like a disposable one for onetime darknet payment.

Hi Ally, thanks for the compliment! Basically anything that’s a local wallet you on your computer or client-side wallet in browser rather than account service. Two that I’ve used are Multibit classic (Not HD, although that would still work like this if you’ve only made one deposit or only deposited to one address, its just that if you click ‘request payment’ it will give you a new address each time that send from multiple addresses) and coinb.in, but I’m sure there are others as well.

It has made a nice change finding simple answers to my questions. Ive read so much over the past week and its all jargon that goes strait over my head. I have now got onto several markets and without question the mosr baffeling part of the prosess was PGP Keys until reading your work i got nowhere but all is good now

Glad to help, I found the same thing when I was getting started learning about these things as I’m not one of those uber-geeks, so I think that made it easier for me to write about this stuff in a way that normal people understand.

Thank you for writing a very helpful guide for newbies like me. While I’m not yet ready to buy something from the darknet, do you know if I can securely browse through a site? Can I be flagged, or monitored, just by visiting a darknet site?

I am looking for someone to find out about someone, who denounced a person online and made that person get charged by the police and government (almost the last three years). Even though that person is accused falsely. And still no one of the police will see. That someone uses hidden servers and trails, It would be great to help, cause that person is someone that helped me out the last couple of years, when I was not doing well… Oh, before I forget, I have nothing to pay. But I would not want anything illegal or so, just to find someone who hurts others that has not been doing anything wrong. Thank you.

Ive lost my phone and want to retrieve my what’s app messages because there is some important information on there. So I need to hack into my own phone . Can anyone provide me details of a phone hacker ?

Dream Market stealing from customers now? I lost 152 dollars after a direct deposit of bitcoins. It happened it less than 4 minutes. So I contact support and they give some bullshit story about a bad Dream Market link being the culprit of the stolen money. Odd because I only ever used the authorized links associated with site. I always check before signing in. The account is now dead. Passwords changed, everything changr. Customer support vanished quickly thereafter. 4 minutes and the money was withdrawn…I gave a moderator the bitcoin address where the stolen money was deposited. It was evident in my transactions. I asked, kindly, if they could cross check that bitcoin address too see if any of the Sellers I had purchased items from previously was using it. A simple investigation…nothing. I am now convinced this was a inside job. Money does NOT disappear that quick unless someone has direct and immediate access to your account. It would have been nice if they put some sort of conservative effort in trying to investigate this situatiion but the lack of responce would indicate this was a inside job. People should be aware. Doubtless this is going to happen again to someone else. Now I wonder when the next big exit scam will occur on here. Absolute power corrupts…absolutely.

What bothers me is providing ID to buy bitcoins initially. Surely that can be tracked back to you? Then if I understand it right you need to use a mixer when withdrawing coins to your own wallet as well? But in another articel you said

“It may be possible to receive coins through a mixer, but quirks imposed by may popular services such as expiring addresses or the need to send precise amounts to the addresses provided can make this difficult.”

So you can’t withdraw bitcoins to your own(real world) wallet through a mixer?

Oh sorry, I didn’t express that very well.This doesn’t affect sending coins to your wallet – you can always send coins to your own wallet through a mixer with no problem.The issue is with using a mixer to send coins to a store account or directly for a purchase of an item using bitpay or something.

Hi dean, sorry to disturb, I would love to know how hacked credit cards work and if it’s possible to order with the credit cards to any location in the world without any stress. I’m a newbie with no experience and I’m in need of money urgently for some very important thing. Thank you

On my phone I go to http://darknet.online/ through “pwoah7foa6au2pul.onion.vin”, it’s handy, there is no need to download third-party programs
It’s better to open “http://darknet.online/” onion by using foreign anonymizers like “hansamkt2rr6nfg3.onion.vin”.

I’ve been trying to grasp everything I should do but if you are not a computer person, this stuff is really hard. Let’s say I wish to purchase something from a market for the first time. I have never owned a sliver of bitcoin in my life. The words “wallet” “tor” “vpn” “pgp” “onion” “cryptocurrency” “mixer” are to me what my expecting you to know all of the musical terms I use when I play guitar or write songs like arpeggios or “you might want to hammer the 7th on and off a few times to give it a Nordic death feel” or whatever. Yes, I go on the net. Yes you like music. But this is technical. All of these choices are very informative but what would be truly truly helpful would be “How to buy something in under an hour with crypto currency safely” and step 1. Make sure your browser is blahblah which you can do HERE. 2. Go to blahblah for transactions under $blah. Etc etc so we can just follow it like building funiture. Making a purchase seems harder than teaching someone stairway to heaven when really ot should just be like the 12 bar blues right? Whoever could do this would have many grateful individuals – buyers and sellers – thanking them. Because the complexity and the fear that I’m going to mess up some step i didn’t read the little article or watch the video or get the concept of will make my money or privacy go poof and i don’t care to know why or what, just how. Think about it. Other than that, youre pribably the easiest of all of you confusing guys to understand lol